Add admins to your Valheim server

An admin on a Valheim server is a player who can open the in-game admin console and use it to kick, ban and unban people, force a save and change world modifiers. Valheim keeps the list of admins in a text file called adminlist.txt, and your server's Players tab edits that file for you, so you never have to open it yourself.

Checked against Valheim 1.0.20 (patch of 15 October 2026) and Iron Gate's own dedicated server guide, October 2026.

What being an admin gives a player

An admin can press F5 in game to bring down the console and run the admin commands: kick, ban, unban and banned, plus save, setworldmodifier and setworldpreset. Valheim admin and dev commands lists them with their syntax.

Admin rights do not unlock cheats. The Valheim wiki states that admin only covers the commands for managing a server, not cheat commands or debug mode.

Add an admin from the Players tab

This is the easiest way, because the panel fills in the player's ID for you.

1. Ask the player to join your server once. With crossplay on, a player on any platform is picked up the same way.
2. Open the Players tab and stay on Online.
3. Find their name in the list and click Make admin beside it. The button appears once the server has shown the panel that player's ID, so if it is missing, wait a moment and check again.
4. A Saved message says the change applies the next time the server starts. Restart the server.

Once the panel has reloaded the list after the save, the button on that row reads Admin. Click it to take their admin rights away again; the same restart rule applies.

Add an admin by their ID

If the player is not online, or the button never appeared, add the ID yourself.

1. Open the Players tab and choose Admins.
2. Paste the ID into the Paste an ID box and click Add. Add stays greyed out until the ID has a valid shape: a 17-digit Steam ID, or a platform ID such as Xbox_2535451158060505.
3. Restart the server.

To remove someone, click the X at the end of their row. How to find a player's Valheim ID shows where each kind of ID comes from.

What the file looks like

If you prefer, open the File Manager and go to .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/adminlist.txt. Valheim puts a line starting with // at the top, then one ID per line. Iron Gate's guide describes the ID format as the platform name, an underscore, then the user ID, and says it is case sensitive. Keep each ID alone on its line, with no names or notes beside it, and Restart after saving.

If it does not work

• The admin console does nothing. Check the player is on the Admins list and that you restarted the server after adding them. The panel applies list changes the next time the server starts, so restart after every change.
• F5 opens nothing on Steam. The Valheim wiki says to add -console to Valheim's launch options in Steam (right click the game, Properties, General, Launch Options).
• You pasted a character name. The list takes IDs only. The panel refuses anything that is not an ID.